


My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark

by tiger_moran



Series: Lyric [13]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Don't copy to another site, Drunk Sex, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Sex, Loneliness, M/M, Referenced James Moriarty, Unhealthy Relationships, no actual sex shown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27496948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: Thirteenth in a collection of standalone but also interconnected Moriarty and Moran fics inspired by lyrics from songs, particularly pop/rock songs.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty, Sebastian Moran/Ronald Adair
Series: Lyric [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992709
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark
> 
> A constellation of tears on your lashes  
> Burn everything you love  
> Then burn the ashes  
> In the end everything collides  
> My childhood spat back the monster that you see

He told himself, after the first time, this would never happen again, but Moran is a liar of course and he lies even to himself, over and over again.

“Seb, come back to bed,” pleads Adair.

Moran looks at him in the reflection in the mirror opposite the bed, grimacing at what he sees. Even the darkness of the room cannot hide the evidence of what he's just done – the naked young man sitting there, the crumpled sheets, the clothes scattered carelessly around.

“No.” He lights his cigarette, cupping his hand around it as he does so, feeling the heat of the match's flame against his palm. He thinks about putting it right against his skin, burning it even; maybe that way he'll feel something else other than this sick feeling in his stomach and this aching void in his chest.

He was drunk, he knows that, same as last time, and the time before. Did Adair know? Was he drunk also? Moran can't remember and never cares enough to try harder to do so.

He takes a long pull on his cigarette. His hands are shaking and looking at the bed, seeing someone there who desires him still but who is not at all the man Moran wants... he feels the tears spring to his eyes, coalescing on his lashes, blurring his vision. He wipes them away furiously with the back of his free hand, cursing himself.

“I 'ave to go.” He stoops, tries to find his shirt, which turns out to be entangled with Adair's trousers somehow. He has to clamp the cigarette between his lips to free both of his hands in order to disentangle them, and by that time Adair has slid across the bed, bounced off it and embraced him from behind.

“Don't go. I don't have to go back home yet, Mama and Hilda won't be there yet.” Adair runs his hand down Moran's chest, down his abdomen, trying to grasp the Colonel's cock again.

But Moran has no intention of staying here, not for more sex, not to sweet talk Adair. He bats Adair's hand away. “Look, Ronnie.” Moran manages to slip out of Adair's hold and get his shirt on again, which helps him feel a little more in control again, just slightly. “You're a sweet boy.”

Adair pulls a face. “I'm a grown man, Seb.”

_Not much of one,_ Moran thinks. “This... it should never 'ave 'appened. Shouldn't... keep 'appening.”

“Why do you talk like that anyway?” Adair asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed again. “I've read up about you, your father is a Lord, yet when we're alone you talk like... some _guttersnipe_.”

“My father is a fucking arsehole!” Moran spits out.

Adair blinks at this. Perhaps nobody has ever sworn around him before.

Moran doesn't want to get into some discussion right now about his pronunciation; about the fact he tends to lapse into an accent most would describe as 'common'; that this has now become his default mode of speech and that to use the accent that those in polite society presume is his real one requires him to act a role that is not him, not at all. He certainly does not want to explain to Adair that it is primarily because of his father that he _does_ speak like this, precisely because the old man loathes it so. The Professor always understood it, but Adair would never understand it, any of it.

“Please come back to bed,” he says.

“No.”

Adair idly plays with one of his own curls, twisting the strands of hair around his finger. “I wanted you as soon as I saw you, you know.”

“More fool you.” Moran continues pulling on his clothes.

“I've broken it off with Edith.”

At this Moran pauses, staring at him. “What do you mean?”

“My fiancee.”

“I know who you mean, but why?”

“Because when I met you I knew... what I had with her was... not what I truly want.”

“So what do you expect from me, some grand romance?” Moran says scathingly, gesturing vaguely with his glowing cigarette as he tries to ram his feet back into his boots. “Me to bring you flowers and love tokens and whisper sweet nothings in your ear? Ain't gonna happen, Ronnie. Sorry.”

“I know society will never accept us, Seb, but, we can find ways, to be together.”

“No.”

“But-”

“I don't want you, Ronnie. Never did.” Moran stoops to ties his bootlaces.

“Then why did you...?” Adair gestures towards the bed.

“Because I was drunk and you were there and... and...” _And he wasn't._ And because last time he met Kitty Winter, dear darling Kitty, he lashed out at her too, and she likely hates him now, and so what does it matter, really, if he burns another bridge now? If he turns this misguided foolish boy against him too?

The look that crosses Adair's face almost pains him, but he can't be sympathetic, can't be kind; doesn't have it in him to do so, not now. He has too much of his own hurt to deal with.

“Because I'm not a good man, Ronnie,” he says at last, straightening up, and yet still Adair looks at him, wide-eyed and adoring, and maybe this is the wrong thing entirely to say to him, for it seems this young man has a taste for men who are not exactly _good_. “I'm bad and I'm dangerous and it's better for you, better for everyone, that you realise that now, before it's too late.”

“You can't just walk out on me!” Adair cries after him. “Seb, if you walk out on me now I'll-”

“You'll what?” Moran snarls, and he spins around and grips Adair by the chin, glaring at him. “You think you can threaten me, _boy_?”

Adair though only looks back at him, grinning. Moran's behaviour seems to excite him more than intimidate him. Ronald Adair is, it seems, not exactly the unemotional, laid back, rather lazy and even boring aristocrat most assume him to be.

Feeling almost disgusted, Moran lets go of him.

“I always get what I want in the end, Sebastian,” Adair says.

“Not from me.” And snatching up his jacket, still with the glowing cigarette clasped in his hand, Moran stalks from the room.


End file.
